


What A Piece Of Work Is Man

by Lustmord (OurPaleCompanion)



Series: In Training [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: BDSM, Bondage, Crying, F/M, Flogging, Gothic, Sexual Slavery, Torture, Victorian, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 09:14:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10896273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OurPaleCompanion/pseuds/Lustmord
Summary: Mr. Willoughby is not a man to be kept waiting...or crossed.





	What A Piece Of Work Is Man

**Author's Note:**

> The first piece in this work was a piece of throwaway smut I wrote almost five years ago - but having rediscovered it, and shown it to some friends, their enthusiastic approval has convinced me to turn this into a fully-fledged series. I hope you enjoy Violet and Mr. Willoughby's adventures, you bad people.
> 
> Phil xo

Violet stood before the study door, fingers tapping nervously at the sheaf of papers in her hand. The wooden  _ tick _ and throaty  _ tock  _ of the grandfather clock down the hall punctuated the silence like the footsteps of an executioner. She had waited at least ten minutes. Mr. Willoughby, in one of his customary assertions of authority, had recently expressed his displeasure at Violet admitting herself after knocking, and had insisted she wait until given permission to enter. As with all of his arbitrary rules, her gentleman companion seemed to delight in finding the myriad different ways in which they could be applied. 

Frustration got the better of Violet and she knocked again. Almost immediately, she regretted it; impatience was a trait Mr. Willoughby abhorred and punished accordingly. The pit of her stomach lurched with surprise as that lead-lined voice hummed through the door in immediate response: “You may enter.” Violet winced as she turned the doorknob and scurried inside, her eyes glued to the floor throughout.

With the swing of the pendulum muted behind the closed door, the study felt unsettlingly still. No fire burned in the grate, no wind battered at the windows and made the panes rattle. Silence seized the room. “Mr. Willougbhy, Sir?” Violet addressed the turned leather chair across the room, where she could be certain he was sitting. No response. After a second of hesitation she stepped forward a few paces. The total quiet of the room turned the rustle of her linen slippers into an all-encompassing din. She extended one arm, gingerly, as she approached the chair. 

“Keen,” Mr. Willoughby’s dark voice boomed from behind Violet, making her flinch so violently she almost tossed her pages into the air, “today, aren’t we?” Violet spun on the spot to see him leaning, arms crossed, in the near corner of the room. She had walked straight past him as she entered, blocked from sight by the door. He didn’t look angry - he never did - but she could sense a violence building in him. 

“I’m very sorry, Sir,” she apologised immediately, bowing her head, “but I thought perhaps you had not heard me the first time.”

“Is that what you thought?” Mr. Willoughby replied, indulgently. “Well, in that case, you must suppose me remarkably mild to tolerate my summons being ignored a full ten-” he pulled a gold pocket-watch from his waistcoat, “-twelve minutes,” he corrected himself. He let silence settle itself upon them again as Violet’s head bowed deeper. “Am I a mild man, Violet?” Violet shook her head. “I’m sorry?” Mr. Willoughby asked, cocking his head to one side. 

“No, Sir,” Violet said, clearing her throat. “Apologies again, Sir.” 

Mr. Willoughby drew in a deep breath and paced slowly towards his charge. “Look at me when I’m talking to you,” he said, soft and threatening. Violet raised her head to look him in the eye. There were many who would call Mr. Willoughby handsome, and many more who would call him ugly; with a thick, wide jaw, heavy brow and sunken cheeks, his grey eyes were like shards of flint glinting out of a rock-face. Violet had long supposed that in another era, he could have been found tramping across Gaul, subjugating Celts for the Empire. “What have I said,” he asked slowly, “about impatience?”

Violet gulped and recalled the words he had made her recite, over and over, as he tanned her. “As we are servants of all, I am servant to you,” she said.

“That’s right,” Mr. Willoughby said, with the firm reproach of a disappointed schoolteacher. “And since it appears this is a lesson that requires repeating, we will not be discussing your work today.” He plucked the sheaf of papers from Violet’s trembling hands and turned to lay them on his writing-desk.

“B-but I’ve written sixteen pages, and they’re just as you a-” Violet’s breath caught in her throat as Mr. Willoughby turned with the speed of a cat with its hackles up, paralysing her with his gaze. Biting her lip, she held her hands behind her back and bowed her head once more. 

“Quite a few lessons bear repeating, it would appear,” Mr. Willoughby growled as he walked back to Violet, standing just inches in front of her. “Look at me.” Violet looked up again, her lip now trembling and eyes beginning to sting with tears of frustration, and not a little fear. Mr. Willoughby looked her up and down; he seemed to appreciate the red, high-collared blouse she had chosen, not least for the way the fabric stretched over her large bosom. 

“Remove it,” he instructed her, stepping backwards to oversee. Violet began unfastening her buttons, one by one, her eyes occasionally flickering upwards to watch the effect she was having on Mr. Willoughby’s face. After the first few buttons fell loose, the weight of her breasts forced the next two open. A barely-perceptible intake of breath hissed across the room as Mr. Willoughby straightened up slightly. She unfastened the remaining buttons in silence and, tugging her cuffs over her hands, Violet shrugged the garment off of her. 

Mr. Willoughby’s head tilted to one side as he admired the way her breasts hung over the lip of her corset. “Shoes,” he said. Violet daintily tugged her heels out of her slippers and let them drop off her toes, shivering slightly as her stocking feet touched the cold wood floor. “Skirt,” Mr. Willoughby continued, beginning to circle her, like a painter posing his model for a sketch. Violet loosened the buttons on each hip and pushed her skirt down until it slid down her thighs and fell in a crumpled ring around her feet, revealing striped white bloomers which stopped just above the knee. “Good,” Mr. Willoughby muttered, as though he were appraising a piece of machinery. As he circled her like a wild cat deciding when the prey it had stalked was weak enough for it to pounce, Violet curled her toes to warm them and tried to ignore how stiff and tender the cold room was making her exposed nipples. Without warning, Mr. Willoughby reached over and pulled a pair of pins from her tightly-bound hair, letting it tumble down over her shoulders. Another pair of pins fell to the floor with a soft tinkle, and Violet’s entire coiffure came cascading across her back and breasts.

“Hamlet,” Mr. Willoughby whispered into Violet’s ear, to her mild confusion. “Act two, scene two. You know it, don’t you?” 

Violet repressed a frustrated sigh. “Yes,” she said, before the unmistakable sound of a cabinet being unlocked behind her made every hair on her arm stand on end. “I know it,” she finished. She knew better than to look around.

“For what is it most famous?” Mr. Willoughby asked. Still staring straight ahead of her, Violet responded.

“A soliloquy by Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” she replied, “commonly known as-” she gasped as cold metal gripped her left wrist with a click, then felt Mr. Willoughby’s hands wrapping around her waist to fasten her hands in front of her. 

“Recite it,” Mr. Willoughby whispered into her ear, one hand holding her slender wrists together, the other groping her breast.

Violet swallowed hard, centring herself with a steady exhale. “ _ What a piece of work is man, _ ” she began. “ _ How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty. _ ” Mr. Willoughby relented from squeezing her soft, sore breast and moved away.

“Continue,” he muttered darkly.

“ _ In form and moving how express and admirable, in reason- _ ” Violet was cut off mid-sentence with a gasp as she felt cool steel against her spine, letting out an unwilling squeal as the cords of her corset were cut away from her. Mr. Willoughby plunged the knife under the remaining cords for a second cut, sending the corset crumpling to the floor. 

“Continue,” he repeated, breaths ragged.

“ _In reason_ ”, Violet resumed after some moments, “ _how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a God._ ” Unforgiving metal clamped onto her aching, cold-stiffened nipples with a snap and Violet squealed once more. “Th- _the beauty of the world_... _the paragon of animals!_ ” She continued, looking down to see a pair of small steel jaws, connected by a chain, attached to each of her nipples, and moaning with pain. “ _And_ _yet_...and...yet…” Words failed her. “I can’t...I can’t remember the rest, I’m sorry,” she whispered. 

With a single finger, Mr. Willoughby lifted Violet’s bound hands up by their chain until they rose above her head. “ _ And yet _ ,” he finished for her, reaching up to the chandelier and pulling on a false arm which ratcheted downwards, “ _ to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights me not. No, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so _ .” As he finished he slid Violet’s cuffs over the lowered arm, leaving her stretched and standing, half-naked, in the centre of the room. He surveyed his work and cracked a rare smile.

Violet clenched her fists and closed her eyes, breathing slow and deep as soft footfalls sounded from in front of her to behind her. “What is Hamlet telling us in this speech, Violet?” Mr. Willoughby asked.

“It is a statement of despair,”  Violet replied, writhing slightly as the skin on her back began to pimple with the cold. “Hamlet is commenting upon how, despite his intellect and curiosity, he cannot find joy in life.”

“Hamlet is speaking of himself, then,” Mr. Willoughby asked, suddenly very close to Violet’s ear, “when he praises the faculties of man?” Violet bit her lip as she felt those long, bony fingers slip beneath the waistband of her bloomers and pull them down just enough to expose her rump. She hesitated yet longer as he moved away.

“Yes,” she said finally. A sharp crack rent the air and Violet’s entire body clenched as her cheeks blossomed in stinging pain. Daring to look back, she saw Mr. Willoughby idling dragging the tip of a rattan cane along the ground. 

“But Hamlet is by now established as a student of the philosophical arts,” Mr. Willoughby stated, tapping Violet’s bottom gently and repeatedly with his cane. “Thus, he would be well-acquainted with man’s potential for greatness and the sublime. Could he be expressing a certain guilt that his melancholy is preventing him from emulating such greatness?”

“No, I-” Violet began, but another cruel smack of the cane cut her off mid-sentence with a yelp. “I feel that Hamlet’s mood is far from philosophical,” she breathed, whimpering slightly as the tapping resumed, each little beat like the prick of a pin on her tender, reddening skin. “He has seen his father murdered and throne usurped; he has sunk into a deep depression and-” Violet let out another taut yell as Mr. Willoughby whipped the cane into her bottom again. “And thus has reduced his worldview to one which starts and ends with him,” she finished, biting her lip and groaning with pain. Finally, the tapping stopped. The searing heat of her beaten rear was almost enough to distract from the pain of the steel clips biting into her swollen nipples.

“That is one way to look at it,” Mr. Willoughby admitted to the accompaniment of instruments being laid down, picked up, and tested with a swish through the air. “But stress affects us all in different ways, Violet. It’s true that Hamlet could be reacting to his troubles by burying his head in the sand like the fabled ostrich,” he continued as Violet’s head sunk downwards as the pain on her breasts and backside, and the ache of her outstretched arms, continued to gnaw at her. “But it’s equally likely that this is a symptom of one of the overarching themes of the play - revenge.” 

Violet cried out, long and loud, as cruel whips tore at the flesh of her shoulders. She let out a sob as she recognised the unmistakable kiss of the cat o’ nine tails, Mr. Willoughby’s favourite toy. Her counterarguments evaporated like spilt water on a stovetop as the pain flowed through her. “I don’t...I don’t understand,” she muttered. Another Violet, trapped deep at the back of her mind, understood, but this Violet struggled to maintain any train of thought. The pain was all there was, the chains were all she knew. She existed only in this moment, an object. 

“From the moment he sees his father’s ghost,” Mr. Willoughby explained, “Hamlet’s entire motivation is to avenge his death. He does this by feigning madness throughout; making himself beneath suspicion. His speech is indeed a statement of depression, but it is also a lie.” Another thud of the flogger into Violet’s back almost buckled her knees. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are - or at least, Hamlet sees them as - parasites, enthralled by his uncle,” Mr. Willoughby continued as Violet began to sob silently. “Thus, he lets them see what he wants his uncle to think; that he is mad, depressed, and of no danger. But in reality-” One last blow of the cat o’nine tails made Violet cry out in pain, long and mournful. “He is mocking them. He is comparing them - these two pathetic, ignorant characters - to the paragon of humanity he knows is possible. And by comparing them, he thus compares all of humanity - including himself. In Hamlet’s eyes,” he muttered, reaching out a hand to caress the livid, bleeding welts that criss-crossed Violet’s back like parquet, “we are all animals.”

“Macbeth,” Violet whispered. Mr. Willoughby’s hand retracted sharply, his ice-grey eyes widening. “Macbeth,” Violet repeated more loudly, lifting her head with tears streaming hot across her cheeks. At once Mr. Willoughby unlocked her handcuffs and supported her body in strong arms, guiding her gently down to the floor.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered as she wrapped her weak arms around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder. “I’ve got you.” They sat on the floor together, entwined and silent but for Violet’s muffled wails as those strong fingers stroked and caressed her hair, his silky voice shushing and cooing into her ear. After what felt like hours had passed in each other’s arms, Violet pulled her face away from Mr. Willoughby’s shirt and sniffed messily.

“Are you alright?” He asked her. Violet smiled sadly and nodded. “I’m sorry. You know I like it,” he said sheepishly, a playful smile lighting up his features. When he smiled, Violet thought, he looked twenty years younger; the grey of his eyes glittered like a midnight sky and the crags and wrinkles in his face disappeared.

“I know,” she said, wiping her nose on the back of her hand as Mr. Willoughby pulled off his jacket and put it around her shoulders, taking care not to aggravate her injuries. “But...please warn me first.” Mr. Willoughby chuckled and kissed Violet’s forehead. “Will we actually go through my pages?”

“Of course, darling,” Mr. Willoughby replied, rubbing her arm tenderly. “Once you’re feeling yourself again. It really is an exceptional novel. I mean that.” Violet smiled and lay her head against Mr. Willoughby’s shoulder, closing her eyes as he stroked her hair.

“Thank you, Henry,” she whispered.

“Thank  _ you _ ,” he replied, “Mrs. Willoughby.”


End file.
